Earlier, we discussed Wolfgang Bohringer, the shadowy German pilot connected to lead 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta. Bohringer previously had played the role of personal pilot to the notorious Eastern European financial wheeler-dealer Victor Kozeny.I once described Kozeny as a character out of a Brosnan-era James Bond flick. If you can think up a better brief description, I'll use it.
To recap our tale: Bohringer started up a "flight school" on the tiny, remote South Pacific isle of Kiribati (pronounced "Kiribas"), which has lots of grass huts and few modern conveniences. Who would want to learn to fly DC3s in a place that even Ginger and Mary-Ann would consider primitive? Smugglers, perhaps.
Smugglers love DC3s.
Not long ago, the FBI, which has long known of Bohringer's connection to Atta, put out a terror alert for the German pilot. The feds wanted to know what he was up to on Kiribati. He promptly left the island on his yacht, the good ship Argos, on which he reportedly keeps stacks of hundred dollar bills.
And that's where we ended the previous installment.
Turns out the FBI finally caught up with Wolfgang -- who, after a brief interrogation, was allowed to go on his way. Why did the terror alert end so abruptly? According to Hopsicker's source,
Bohringer told authorities that he worked for the Central Intelligence Agency. The revelation brought his immediate release.
Now, before we continue, let's make a few things clear: Hopsicker has, as far as I know, only one source for this part of the story. He has not named the source and I will not ask him to do so.As you probably know, lots of crooks have made similar claims. Back in the 1980s, Florida drug runners, upon capture, routinely told cops of their "Company" connections. Many of those claimants nevertheless ended up doing time.
Thus, in all likelihood, the Feds would not have let Wolfgang toodle along quite so rapidly unless someone back at CIA headquarters had vouched for him.
Keep in mind that a great big "if" underlies the previous sentence: If Hopsicker's anonymous source has spoken accurately, then someone probably told a federal agent to toss this particular fish back into the pond.
After making due note of that qualifier, let us pause to consider the implications of these words: Atta had a friend linked to the CIA...
Consider, too, the likelihood of such a link. Why wouldn't the Agency want to recruit someone in Kozeny's entourage? Even though Bohringer knew Atta well, nobody has ever suggested hauling the German pilot off to Gitmo -- home to numerous "suspects" whose connections to terrorism are tangential or nonexistent.
If you're now asking yourself whether Bohringer and Atta truly were close, this interview with Atta's girlfriend, Amanda Keller, is a must-see. Although Hopsicker sells copies of his videotaped material, he doesn't seem to mind the fact that someone -- not me! -- made this particular interview available for free. So download away.
Was Amanda a fantasist? The Sarasota Herald Tribune would have you think so, but plenty of independent eyewitnesses place her with Atta. The interview itself is the best evidence of her veracity. In my time, I've met a lot of yarn-spinners -- people who have tried to inject themselves into big news tales -- but none of 'em could have done what Amanda Keller does here. True, I do not possess an infallible BS detector. (Who does?) But I do know something about acting, and acting this ain't. Even the finest performers in Hollywood could not pull off improv work of this caliber.
Amanda said that Atta referred to Wolfgang Bohringer as "my brother."
Amanda also said that Atta claimed membership in a mysterious group which he called "The Family."
Shortly before the 9/11 attack, Atta and his comrades ate at a Florida restaurant, where the proprietor heard them make references to "The Family." Hopsicker sells another videotape which contains an interview with the restaurant owner.
Hopsicker assures me that he did not prompt either interview subject. They both made independent claims that they overheard Atta speaking of an enigmatic "Family." The term "brother" seemed to indicate membership in this "Family."
Was "the Family" intra-group slang for Al Qaeda? The CIA? Another intelligence agency? The House of Saud? The House of Bush...?
I do not know, but I'd love to hear your suggestions -- as long as they have nothing to do with controlled demolitions and other fairy tales.
16 comments:
What's a fantasist?
What's a fantasist? Someone with fantasies.
I was about to say something about Nigella Lawson here. Really, I deserve to have my face slapped.
I have a very close friend who is CIA and I have not ever heard him use family... or brothers. My gut tells me "the family" is a more sinister thing than even the CIA
Completely unrelated, except through word-choice, is this post from RigInt forums. The author describes an event thrown by his wife's employer and "1) Claims that everyone will be changed by a ceremony at the close of the day which is designed to inculcate loyalty to said corporation. Said ceremony is also where they require everyone to take a pledge that insists you call all fellow employees 'brother' or 'sister'."
So Bohringer skated... Kozeny remains in jail in the Bahamas, according to this recent article.
Damn you Joe! Another great post that sent me down the rabbit hole for two hours when I should have been working!
I've tried to summarize some of this for the residents of the DU 9/11 dungeon and dropped a name check for you over there. This is great stuff, and perhaps the debate over there will shift from melting steel for a while.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=125&topic_id=128630&mesg_id=128630
Hamden from DU
You may be able to guess what the deleted comment is about.
Last night, another blogger privately slammed me for me rough attitude toward the CD-ers, and he ALMOST had me feeling guilty. I really do not enjoy acting in a rude fashion, and I know full well that I have, in fact, been rude.
But then I woke up to encounter this jerk whose comment I just deleted.
CD is not science; it is religion. You know how I know? Because the proponents act like religious nuts.
They are precisely like funadmentalist Christians. They will not go away when asked nicely. No, they FORCE you to be impolite. Impolite messages are the only ones that penetrate their thick skulls.
You cannot say to them: "Look, there are plenty of places to go where you are welcome to speak of such things to your heart's content, Why don't you be a good fellow and save your message for those forums? You are welcome in my place as long as you keep to topics I consider agreeable..."
No, the polite approach doesn't work: They still keep trying for that conversion. As long as they have even the slightest hint of hope, they will keep droning on and on and on, staying where they ARE NOT WANTED because they cannot tolerate any disagreement with their delusions.
They force you give up on civilized behavior and to scream : "GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE AND NEVER COME BACK!"
In short, both Jesusmaniacs and CD proponents refuse to acknowledge the "take it somewhere else" message unless you take out your trusty two-by-four and start applying it to the noggins of anyone who annoys.
God, but I absolutely cannot STAND these turkeys. If science really were on their side, they wouldn't be acting like religious zealots.
As the rigint author mentions in covering this new information from Hopsicker, even such fascinating information as this can be legitimately thought, or disingenuously spun, to be a) deliberate disinformation designed to distract, or b) a kind of dead-end topic that leads nowhere provable that is a fatal mistake for 9/11 doubters to take much time considering, when other leads are so much more glaringly obvious, even granting the best of intentions to Hopsicker and/or those who would follow such leads.
OR, one might argue the reverse, that this story is the true Rosetta stone to unravelling the money nexis behind the 9/11 deeds, the cui bono, ergo the cui culpa, and that therefore the people arguing what is in the paragraph above are the disinformationists and/or dupes of the conspiracy perhaps spreading that disinformation with sincere belief.
The problem in this case, as with CD theories and their detractors, is that, assuming a conspiracy, these people want to get away with a monstrous crime for an immense reward, and will use what may be essentially unlimited monies and other resources to entirely muddy the waters, lay down clever red herrings, leak just enough true damning information to make the next fallback coverup highly convincing, etc.
These people would be presumptively able to muster the greatest talents in propaganda, psy-ops, media in general, writers across the board, etc., to push their preferred cover story (-ies), selectively bring out their own loyal opposition positions using ringers and plants or honest but misled advocates, decide when or if to explode their own 'kept' opposition at the right time for maximal effect, and on and on.
This creates a maelstrom of mischief, suspicions, accusations, raised voices, finger-pointing, intolerant rants, shunning or boycotting people from the 'truth' movement, and the rest, fully on display throughout the on-line research community and their varying carnival barker publicists.
Which is to say we are looking down a hall of mirrors deliberately constructed by the best mirror trickery technologists around and trying to determine what is real and where it is, to begin to examine it. So when you think your brother is overly gullible to swallow whichever story you 'know' is nonsense, don't blame him excessively-- he's the victim of experts at the trade.
Are some elements of the truth about 9/11 in the public domain (meaning, published somewhere in the 9/11 truth movement)? I think so. Are deliberately false claims about 9/11 promoted to distract and confuse? I'd expect that is true as well.
Which is which, and who is right? Hard to say, really, when you realize the disinformation would be at state of the art levels. One thing to remember, however, is that the naive application of normal reasoning is unlikely to be an adequate guide to what is reasonable and what is unreasonable.
The claim that 'THEY' would 'NEVER' do 'THAT,' because of the fear of being caught, is one example of 'reasonable' thinking that probably falls short of the mark. For it entirely depends upon 'THEIR' confidence levels in their control of the information flow, should it happen they or some of their logistics were discovered. The recent examples along these lines, on 9/11 and 7/11 (whatever the bombings of public transportation in England are known as) are the claims that, yes, by sheerest coincidence, training missions involving exactly what happened happening were going on simultaneously with this bizarre coincidental reality.
J. Edgar Hoover said that the average person is at a grave disadvantage when they run into evidence of a conspiracy so immense that it beggars their imagination. Guessing, he meant the Mafia or other organized crime.
To what was Woodrow Wilson referring, when he said that at the highest levels of industry or government, something existed so monstrous and all-powerful that even the most powerful men in the country dared only speak of it in whispers, if they dared mention it all (my close paraphrase)?
Probably a neo-fascist industrialist claque, steeped in secret society brotherhoods, multi-generational or centuries old plots, of nearly unimaginable wealth and power, whose hubris may find them doing unwise things that many would find irrational and impossible, simply out of the knowledge that they own the corporate media and can have it say whatever they want, or leave unmentioned whatever they want.
The Moonies refer to themselves as "the family," members call each other "brother" and "sister," and Moon refers to himself and his wife as the "true parents." This may appear to be fairly left field, but the Moonies do have many nefarious, high-level, and/or global connections, as many of you know (not to mention lotsa money, and strange ceremonies in Washington DC). I only know about the above terminology because after reading this post I browsed through a library book about cults (bedtime reading), and there it was. Serendipity? Maybe worth further investigation, at least.
Anon 3:11: I'm not sure I agree with the tone here, which would reduce the debate over 9/11 to an abstruse exercise in epistemology. ANY debate can be so reduced, but to what purpose?
Hoover, if he said the words you attribute to him, probably referred to Communism. I'm guessing that you are referencing something J. Edgar published in "Masters of Deceit" -- a book I once owned but did not really read, and which Hoover himself did not really write. So I guess that makes us even.
Right-wing fearmongers have a long history of attributing spurious or out-of-context quotes to Woodrow Wilson. The quote to which you refer appears primarily on far-right crank sites and reads as follows:
"Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it."
--Woodrow Wilson, The New Freedom (1913)
I haven't read that book either, but I do know that it was about anti-trust legislation and banking reform. So I imagine that Wilson was talking about something other than what you may think he was talking about.
You can find a good sampling of what Wilsonian thought, circa 1913, here:
http://www.vlib.us/amdocs/texts/monopoly.htm
Here's a bit:
"The amazing thing to me is that the people of the United States have not seen that the administration of a great business like that is not a private affair; it is a public affair."
Read the whole thing, and you will see that the "power" to which Wilson made reference was almost certainly the anti-monopoly movement. That is, the power of Congress and "the people" to hold big biz in check.
It's a message that I wish people today would heed!
I also wish people would stop creating a false impression of what WW actually believed. The anti-tax guys are particularly guilty of filling his mouth with words he never said. More on that topic anon.
sofla said...
That anon was me. Former philosophy/math major, so pardon my epistemological meanderings and dissent. But NO, explaining the evidentiary issues with cases like 9/11 and the JFK assassination is not like the run of the mill skepticism that practiced minds like David Hume's are able to bring to anything, even the most mundane parts of our world and personal experiences.
Not at all. Because the world-altering, billions to hundreds of billions to trillions of dollars worth of consequences of such 'crimes of the century' provide as great a motive as could possibly exist, both to do the deed, and to be absolutely sure one gets away with it.
These 'get away with it' techniques are well known in general outline and nothing the mafia or various governments haven't used many a time, usually in assassinations, as when Israel blew up the Lebanese nationalist leader and blamed it on Syria.
Part of it is to provide a patsy or patsies, and set up a good frame job to pass first muster. Then you need the patsies dead or neutralized (insanity pleas, heavily drugged mental hospital incarceration, etc.). Then you need a vigilant rearguard effort to suppress, oppose, or co-opt those trying to look under the rug.
Divide and conquer is an old tactic, and governmental sowing of dissent among its critics is very old as well (see the US government infiltration in COINTELPRO, and how government provocateurs did exactly these things, or check Operation Gladio's history of synthetic terror). These are very effective techniques and are to be reflexively expected in crimes of such enormity.
So, the difference is, in such cases, entirely unlike most issues in life, military or intelligence agency psy-ops experts will be doing their level best job for hire, deliberately confusing the issues and targeting prominent researchers who are getting too close to some fact or another.
For example, most controversies wouldn't get you a primetime NBC special set up against you, or have the equivalent of a Johnny Carson attempt to eviscerate your position with lies on live television, as Jim Garrison experienced. And that made those two attempts fairly effective, because who would suspect a network and Johnny Carson would go to such lengths, falsely. They were only somewhat less effective than they might have been because they were so over the top that NBC was forced to give Garrison his own show to respond, and they had to alibi for Carson (he wasn't himself, the Johnny we know and love!, said by a substitute host the next show, iirc).
No, the skepticism we should bring to the table in such significant cases is orders of magnitude beyond what we'd normally consider in a typical case. Puzzle house, indeed, which is why the counterintelligence office James Jesus Angleton is thought by many to have been driven mad by the requirements of his job description.
Is is possible "The Family" recently had a "Big Wedding?"
So the hijackers are now MORE closely tied to Bush than they ever were to Saddam.
Which country, I wonder, will invade the U.S. to relieve us of our terrorist dictator...?
One has to laugh at those would deny a 911 conspiracy. the fact is there are very many conspiracies on record everything from Burr's attempt to grab an empire to Iran Contra.
How many off the record will we never know about?
"One has to laugh at those would deny a conspiracy."
Seriously. Major multi-person (200+) complicated conspiracies have been stopped by our lame-ass justice department.... for them to exist without being caught makes total sense.
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